“I undertake not to bid at auction or negotiate by private treaty to buy real estate until prices moderate, just as they have in all the countries we compare ourselves to,” the Prosper pledge states on its website.

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The campaign has jumped to the top of the list of potential campaign ideas on the online activist site GetUp with hundreds of votes added each day over the past week, outpacing support for same-sex marriage and calls for the Australian government not to bow to pressure to outlaw WikiLeaks. It's also bobbing up on Twitter and in other online forums.

Commentators at home and abroad have long questioned the sustainability of Australia's home price increases. Australia is the most overvalued housing market among countries surveyed by The Economist magazine, which calculated that they are 56 per cent over-priced.

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Australian home prices have increased 77 per cent from December 2002 to the end of 2010 on the Australian Bureau of Statistics capital city house price index. In February the national city house price stood at $465,000, according to RP Data - between four and seven times median household income, depending on the source.

Utility queried

The Real Estate Institute of Victoria, a property industry group, said it shared concerns about the cost of housing but questioned the utility of a buyers' strike.

“People are right to be concerned about affordability problems,” said REIV spokesman Robert Larocca. “Whilst we share everyone's concern about affordability problems, it's a misguided and short-sighted way of trying to deal with it.”

Mr Larocca said that housing affordability had suffered in Melbourne's case because new home construction had failed to keep up with a doubling of the city's population growth in the second half of last decade.

Others, though, lay the blame of rising house prices elsewhere, citing excessive land regulation, speculation by builders, negative gearing and ease of access to loans for driving up costs to unaffordable levels.

'Irresponsible'

Calling it “economically irresponsible” for young adults to be expected to spend 30 years under heavy debt to achieve home ownership, the Prosper strike pledge requires adherents to hold off on auctions or private treaties until prices come down.

Online support for the pledge began after a blogger from the site Bullion Baron added the suggestion to GetUp's campaign idea list. It has since shot up to the number one spot in two weeks, with 3728 votes as of this morning. The system allows users as many as three votes for the same cause.

“It has been very surprising,” said an Adelaide-based blogger running Bullion Baron, who gave his name only as Joseph. “I think the quick move highlights just how important the housing affordability issue is to young Australians.”

GetUp doesn't automatically pursue any suggestion that receives many votes, it said, but popular causes on its forum often prompt a wider response from the left-leaning organisation.

Another campaign idea on GetUp's forum would abolish negative gearing.